Tag: Christoffer Egelund
UNDERTONER @ Christoffer Egelund
Crystel Ceresa
“White Noise” by the Swiss artist Crystel Ceresa (b. 1977). It is the artist’s second solo show at the gallery and the exhibition displays paintings and drawings from the artist’s studio in Geneva. At first glance, the observer is drawn and fascinated by the decorative and skillfully painted surfaces of the large-scale canvases – then by the deeper and more personal reminiscences and threads to art history.
Crystel Ceresa’s delicate aerogrammes share lightness due to the airbrush technique, the color palette of bright pastels and the partially blurred subject matter. A “white noise” occurs in the pictures – in the form of an obscuring mist, sparkling highlights, or carved inscriptions of light – which complicates a clear and evident reading and perception of the content of the works. Among the motifs are jewel-like flowers, portraits of personal heroes, fragments of text and symbolic attributes, appearing as sketches in blurred collage-like compositions. This overall expression indicates that the motives are not objective registrations of the world around us, but rather visual interpretations of the artist’s imagination, sources of inspiration and remembrance. The haze and the fragmented compositions thus maintain the content in a twilight zone as vulnerable and fragile memories that threaten to let go and disappear from the surface.
The works of Crystel Ceresa have an intimate and personal feel to them, and the persons she portrays in her art are made icons, celebrated and surrounded by symbols and represented in a visual language that has both low and fine cultural undertones. On one side the paintings evoke kitsch aesthetics, decorative and applied arts, yet gold backgrounds, skulls, whited surfaces and persons flanked by flowers, also pulls threads back into art history; to Byzantine icons, to the Baroque vanitas, the white powdered decadent images of the Rococo, and to the Pre-Raphaelites’ emblematic depictions of personal muses.
Crystel Ceresa was born in Switzerland in 1977. She graduated from Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva 2004 and from the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Geneva in 1998. Today, she lives and works in Geneva and the interest in her works has been large from day one. Crystel Ceresa has exhibited widely in Switzerland and since 2008 in Denmark. She is represented in several private and corporate collections such as; Academisch Medisch Centrum, Amsterdam, Bank Julius Bär, Basel, Crédit Suisse, Zürich, Zürich Versicherungen, Basel, HSBC, Zürich, Collection Yves Racloz, Geneva and Collection Nicolas Torroni, Geneva.
MEANING OF VOID
Christoffer Egelund Gallery proudly presents the group exhibition ”Meaning of Void”, showing works by artists; Michael Johansson (SE), Pind (DK), Thomas Fleron (DK), Anna Fro Vodder (DK), Ulrik Heltoft (DK) og Melou Vanggaard (DK). Through various installational approaches, the represented artists explore the void and its’ meaning – some avoid the empty space others applaud it. The works move between the empty and the compact space, between order and chaos, between significance and insignificance.
Despite the artists’ point of departure in different media such as installation, sculpture, photography, drawing and painting, the six artists share a strong fascination with exploring new depths, patterns and meanings in one type of detail. In the same way as the collector, the six artists enjoy to carefully select a particular object among a jumble of objects, then emphasizing and reinforcing their significance through accumulation and repetition.
Michael Johansson (b. 1975) is fascinated by repetition and likes to find similar items. He selects, sorts and orders the collected objects in dense compilations. His compact sculptures indicate a ‘Horror Vacui’, a fear of the empty space. Michael Johansson was educated at Malmö Art Academy in 2005 and has several solo exhibitions behind him and he is for instance represented at Malmö Art Museum. Pind (b. 1975) removes seemingly useless – however for him significant – objects from their context and ascribes them new meaning and value. Pind graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. He has had a solo exhibition at Overgaden and participated in several group shows in Copenhagen. Thomas Fleron (b.1972) draws objects whose meaning is not immediately readable. But the stories behind the objects reveal that they refer to political and historical rituals. Thomas Fleron graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 200 0. Anna Fro Vodder (1974) explores origin and valuation in her paintings. The void shows in the form of abstraction and unpainted arias. In her paintings the empty space becomes the element, that gives everything else meaning. Anna Fro Vodder graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2000 and she is represented at Horsens Kunstmuseum. Ulrik Heltoft (b. 1973) explores space as a ‘locus’ for anxiety. His photos show how claustrophobia, fear and nightmares relate to the directionless space. Ulrik Heltoft graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and MFA Yale University in 2001. He has had solo exhibitions at Raucci e Santa Maria in Naples and Willfried Lenz in Rotterdam. Melou Vanggaard (b. 1969) mixes the figurative and the abstract in both her paintings and sculptures. In her works the void becomes a balancing force to the figurative and compact, thus creating a resting place in a space otherwise heavily saturated with meaning. Me lou Vanggaard graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2001.
THINGS THAT MATTER A LOT
It’s not only a matter of what the matter is.
It’s a matter of what is most important. (Translated from Danish)
This is how you could translate Things That Matter A Lot at Galleri Christoffer Egelund, where the artist Trine Boesen, in cooperation with the gallery, has invited the artists Benny Dröscher, John Kørner, Nina Saunders and Theis Wendt to exhibit, under the above-mentioned title.
What matters? Do all things matter equally? We are not always able to see what matters. Art matters, and art is about something that matters. Art works by showing us what we hadn’t expected to see. Ghosts, for instance. Or chaos and revolt in our everyday lives. When art matters, we are genuinely surprised. It’s compact. Or it’s airy, like a vision when we’re blinded.
This is what these five artists work with – and now you can see the result at Galleri Christoffer Egelund. The well-known and well-regulated has gone astray. When the artists show landscapes, cities, human beings or furniture, these do not look the way we’re used to. The smooth illusion of reality has vanished. The title refers to artists whose works make a contribution to the social debate and/or are surrealistic reflections of the surrounding world. Expect equal shares of chaos and artfulness with an edge.
Trine Boesen says:
“We have invited Dröscher, Kørner, Saunders and Wendt because between them they generate a good feeling of both rapture and challenge. They work with things that matter … things that matter a lot. The title is also a comment on the current time of crisis. Art is important, not just money. It’s food for the soul. The artists of the exhibition cover a wide range, so their point of departure, materials and methods, are manifold, and the contributions by the individual artists are mutually reinforcing.
Trine Boesen has painted an entire wall and hung paintings of ghosts on it against a background with a big, black star and bubbles that rise like in sparkling water. Benny Dröscher shows dream-like pictures and intricate sculptures, amongst these a floating suspended sculpture, which may include haloes, glitter, flying objects and a spruce. The artist reaches far. John Kørner, who is known for mixing landscape, pure fantasy and magic realism, shows a great painting from the series of dead soldiers. The title of the painting is Dan. Expect the best and you won’t get disappointed. Nina Saunders creates pure-style white upholstery and impresses us this time with four unheimliche furniture sculptures that have swallowed stuffed animals. Theis Wendt, who is also known for his spatial installations, excels in large-format paper works in a class by themselves. Feel free to study the details.